Tag Archives: MayBea Crafted

More hats

by
Reply

The major season of hat-knitting is upon us! I knit hats year-round. But from now until spring, they finally start disappearing from my finished knits stash.

This first hat is Tanya Thoman’s (of Maybea Crafted’s) excellent design, Munising. I purchased the kit from Thoman at the Tip of the Mitt Fiber Festival at the Emmet County Fairgrounds in Petoskey Michigan. What a great venue for a yarnie event. The yarn is Brown Sheep Nature Spun Sport. The kit had plenty of yarn, in each color.

Munising is near the Pictured Rock National Lakeshore. The Lake Superior shore is home to amazing sandstone cliffs. Streaks of minerals stain the face of the weather-sculpted sandstone when groundwater oozes out of cracks and trickles down the rock face. Iron (red and orange), copper (blue and green), manganese (brown and black), and limonite (white) are among the most common color-producing minerals. The cliffs near Munising inspired this hat’s design.

Pictured Rocks is an amazing feature of our “Pure Michigan.” Plan a visit if you can and be sure to include a visit to some of the many waterfalls around Munising (the city).

Munising (the hat) also has colorful swirling crown.

Shifting gears completely, next up is the popular Ravelry freebie, Ditto. It’s designed by Anne Gagnon. I’ve knit it before. This time I pinked it up with a sweet shade of 7 Veljesta by Novita.

Ditto’s crown is stunningly beautiful but easily knit.

And how could I not knit a second Ditto soon after the pink one? Ditto’s pattern name, not to mention how pretty it is, calls for a second knit. I used Sugarbush Bold, a discontinued yarn whose passing I continue to mourn.

If you’re looking for a fun quick knit that yields great results give Ditto a try. Or two tries. It’s totally worth it.

Next up is the 1898 Hat. It’s a free pattern available via Ravelry or direct from Seaman’s Church Institute’s website. The mission of the institute is provide services to the maritime community. For many decades that has included a Christmas at Sea program. The Institute’s website says the program is one of the “oldest and longest continuously-running charter knitting program in the U.S.” It delivers knitted gifts to the “thousands of professional U.S. mariners at work aboard towboats, harbor tugs, and dredges on the Mississippi River system and the Gulf Intracoastal Waterways” as well as to certain international seafarers. Maybe knit one for your ears and send another to warm a mariners’.

The 1898 Hat is Kristine Byrnes’s winning design in the Institute’s contest looking for hats with earflaps. This hat’s earflaps are the best earflaps ever–amazingly warm, double thick.

We probably can say aloud that this hat is not for the fashionistas among us. But if you’re a person with ears you should definitely considering knitting, wearing, and gifting this hat. I knit this one in Brown Sheep Lamb’s Pride worsted.

The 1898 Hat is said to be inspired by a pattern that Byrnes found in a magazine published around 1910. Demonstrating that I am an incorrigible knitpicker, I admit that I wonder why it isn’t called the 1910 Hat.

My next knit is Jo-Anne Klim’s Totalee Slouchy hat. If you’re interested in checking out my five prior knits of this hat, type misspelled Totallee into the search window and they’ll show up. Klim’s versions are very dignified. My versions tend to the wild side and this version is the wildest yet.

It’s knit in Ella Rae’s Cozy Soft Prints, a DK weight. That’s the yarn in the body of the hat. And the brim is knit in Schachenmayr Merino Extrafine 120. I’d knit a A Bunny Named Quwi in this Ella Rae yarn…

…and this Totallee Slouchy project was designed to use up the remainder. An excellent bunny, methinks, and an interesting hat.

The crown decreases work out into a very pleasing swirl. Kind of a kaleidoscope effect in this difficult-to-tame yarn.

This post has definitely gotten my knit-a-hat juices flowing. So has a few 40 degree mornings!

Welcome Home Yarns

by
2

marquette2

This is Tanya Thomann’s Marquette. Tanya’s the designer behind MayBea Crafted. She’s TanyaTho on Ravelry. She’s my Black Sheep Knitters Guild mate. And she’s also at least one-third of the team responsible for a new all-Michigan yarn, Welcome Home. Carla Kohoyda-Inglis of cjkoho is the dyer. Mary Glass is the Michigan shepherd whose herd of Romney/Blue-Faced Leicester are responsible for the fleece. And the yarn is processed and spun right here in Michigan. My sense of the yarn is that it’s a light worsted weight…or maybe a hefty DK. My Marquette is worked on size 4 US.

I very much enjoyed working with Welcome Home. As I’m thinking you expect, it’s a tad rustic. I like that. Every once in awhile you get a reminder that your yarn was recently walking around in a field. But only every once in awhile.

Tanya has kitted Marquette with plenty of yarn to complete the project. Sheep to skein–all pure Michigan!

Here’s another look at Marquette. It’s got a great crown decrease. No pointiness here.

marquette3

marquette4

There are some long floats to deal with in sections of the pattern. But it’s well worth the effort. And I really like the great saturated colors. Look for Welcome Home at festival booths. Or join Black Sheep Knitters Guild and I’m thinking you’d have an easy source for this kit and this yarn!

This is another MayBea Crafted Welcome Home kit: Drummond.

drummond

This is much easier Fair Isle work than Marquette. No long floats. I wasn’t sure if the orange and pink were going to work well together, including because the colors seemed to me to be a bit hard to distinguish. But the use of brown was inspired. And even when the colors share the brim, they work well together.

Here’s a look at the crown decreases.

drummond2

It’s been in the 90’s for weeks. There’s been almost no rain. It’s so hot and dry that my neighbor has had to move his honeybees because they were starving despite his best efforts. And here I am, knitting winter hats!

You can learn more about this Michigan Sheep-to-Skein effort here and even reintroduce your Welcome Home yarn to its sheep here.

In case you’re not from around these parts, Marquette is a great small city in Michigan’s upper peninsula and Marquette County boasts more than 80 miles of secluded Lake Superior coastline. Drummond Island is a short ferry ride from Detour, on the eastern tip of our upper peninsula. Coming from the direction most folks come from, cross over the Mackinac Bridge and sort of just turn right and you’ll get there. Year round, it isn’t called the “Gem of Lake Huron” without good reason.